harmony and chord

26-02-2014 - Posted by Andre Piet

Sunday, 23 february 2014, the oldest Holocaust survivor, Alice Herz Sommer, at the age of 110 years, died. Alice was born in 1903 into a Jewish family in Prague, where among others, Gustav Mahler and Franz Kafka were regular visitors. Alice learned to play the piano and became a celebrated pianist throughout Europe. When Prague fell into German hands during the war, Alice, eventually, became a prisoner in a concentration camp in 1943, where her husband died but in which she herself, along with her son, survived. In 1949, she emigrated to Israel and she finally established herself in London, in 1986. I’ve seen a number of videos on YouTube of Alice Herz Sommer and they did not fail to impress me. She was not a strong woman of faith, but still…one thing she understood, like few others: everything is a gift! Everything! She knew from bitter experiences, what it is to encounter bad things, but she never focused on them. That’s why she never complained and she laughed a great deal. Because Alice experienced everything as a gift, she saw music everywhere. Literally and figuratively, her life was filled with harmony and chords! [embedplusvideo height=”222″ width=”400″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1msF8vv” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/LManGeoEbDk?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=LManGeoEbDk&width=400&height=222&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep9474″ /]